An extensive week-long demolition and cleanup exercise of illegal structures in Abuja’s Kuje area council has been launched by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA).

Following months of awareness-raising, abatement notices from relevant authorities, and support from Kuje stakeholders, the exercise is a continuation of ongoing measures to mitigate proliferation of illegal structures that are allegedly obstructing human and vehicular movements in the area.

Around 10 a.m. on Monday, the FCTA officials and a large security team from the military, police, and paramilitary organisations stormed the area and cleared roadside encroachments from the notorious tipper garage to the Kuje main market.

During the clean-up exercise, which lasted for about seven hours, hundreds of structures ranging from kiosks, containers, and attachments to stores and worship centres, shanties, and signposts that encroached on the road corridors were pulled down.

However, it was observed that some encroached areas were already cleared by the owners and occupants before the enforcement team arrived for the actual removal.

The senior special assistant to the FCT minister on monitoring, inspection, and enforcement Ikharo Attah, during the exercise, said the demolition was based on the minister’s directive and the guidance of police commissioner Sunday Babaji and other security heads in the FCT.

Attah explained that the minister has not been comfortable with the nature of Kuje, as the extreme contraventions in multiple places in Kuje, make the area very unsafe, illegal settlements, due to the extreme road encroachment, roadside trading, encroachment of rail corridors, and other contraventions in Kuje.

“The clean-up would be a week-long exercise, as Kuje has been very worrisome in some areas of insecurity. Today, we have been able to address the issue of roadside encroachment from the tipper garage to the main market, we could not enter the forest, but we told them to park that forest is not supposed to be a market while we also touched the fruit market.

“Tomorrow we will be claiming the rail corridor, the entire rail corridor, and keep it safe so children can use it for recreation. We marked Kuje about four months ago and we have been waiting for a long, so the word of caution is what they have seen today,” he said.

Regarding the rumoured expansion of the railway that ran through the area, Attah said that Kuje chiefs and residents had debunked any claims of selling the rail corridor. He said the local residents do not have the right to sell the lands in the area, saying the enforcement team has been asked to reclaim the rail corridor.

Charity Onu, a business owner at Kuje market, claimed that the illegal structure had seriously impeded access to the market. Onu said that because of the impediments on the road leading to the market, the vendors are frequently compelled to sell their wares alongside the highway.

“Clearing of the road is very good as it will pave a way for people to come inside, but I will like to appeal to the government to give the dislodged roadside traders a new place, where they can do their business,” she said.